It sounds like the premise of a Blade Runner spinoff, but a hack has been discovered that can stop a pacemaker from up to fifty feet away with a shock of 830 volts. Luckily, the hack doesn't work on every brand of pacemaker, rather, it attacks security vulnerabilities in the software of certain brands.
The new research comes from Barnaby Jack, a security vendor for IOActive. Jack has previously uncovered other weaknesses in medical computer security, including vulnerabilities in insulin-delivering devices. The weakness, according to Jack, centers around the wireless nature of communication with the pacemaker. Clearly, a doctor cannot conduct open heart surgery just to change a pacemakerÃ­s settings, but with remote access, one can easily change how a pacemaker performs.